Different Techniques - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 149

only a small part in the i lms, where the key elements are atmosphere, lighting, music, texture
and design. Their work bears great similarities to dance, where ideas are explored and juggled
with. I get the impression their work grows as they develop it, and should they i nd something
like a beautifully textured antique watch, it might be incorporated immediately into their
current project. You look at some of the objects in their i lms and wonder how they thought
to put them together, but don't they work well? There is a feeling of spontaneity, yet carefully
thought through randomness in their i lms, and a disconcerting atmosphere in everything
they do. Shadows play an important part, and touch on fears that we never quite know what
lurks in the dark when our back is turned. The i lms are shot making great use of focus, picking
out the texture in a pile of dust and making it look beautiful and signii cant, or the focus being
sharp on a screw twisting up out of a l oorboard, giving an inanimate object such presence,
even a character. Their i lms celebrate all that is great about stop motion, and it is hard to think
that the brothers could be satisi ed in working in any other form of animation. I'm not sure a
computer would let them revel in such a variety of textures and light and shade. The puppets
that wander disorientated through their amazing environments seem to be cobbled together
from found objects, often bringing with them echoes of previous lives. Disi gured dolls and
real puppets i gure largely, as if discarded patients from some terrible experiments. Look at
the beautiful, but disturbing Street of Crocodiles (1986), to see the epitome of what makes the
Brothers Quay so disconcerting and haunting. It seems that the making and shooting of the
i lm is an experience in itself, an exciting event where possibly the i lm leads them as much as
they lead the i lm. I doubt that they think of what they do as a job.
Apart from the dazzling artistic merits of their work, one of the main achievements of the
Quays, in stop motion terms, has been in getting emotion and expression out of the most
abstract and unnaturalistic of objects. Evoking a reaction from the audience with a discarded
object scuttling across the l oor is a testament to what animation can do best and shows
that we don't always need realistic and identii able replicas of humans or animals to have
interesting characters.
It is probably futile to try to i nd answers in their i lms, and this appeals to me. Not everything is
explained, and the viewer's imagination is made to confront the breathtaking visuals. The i lms,
like the museums and cabinets of curiosities that inl uence a lot of the work, are full of
suggestions of disturbed childhoods, savage politics, skewed perspectives, repression and
torture, and crammed with literary, artistic and musical references to mainly European i gures,
such as the painter Arcimboldo, the anatomist Honore, the writer Franz Kafka, and the writer
and artist Bruno Schulz. I admire their ability to namecheck and develop work around these
artists, especially when told that my i lm about Gilbert and Sullivan was too esoteric. I have
wondered about this, and perhaps the fact that my puppets were quite literal, and that there
was a conventional narrative going on, made the i lm look as if it was commercial, bringing
with it commercial expectations that perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan could not sustain. Maybe
Gilbert and Sullivan are just not interesting enough.
Linking Gilbert and Sullivan to Timothy and Stephen Quay is an important element
of a third party. In Gilbert and Sullivan's case this was Richard D'Oyly Carte, and
with the Quays it is the producer Keith Grii ths. This seems to have been an
enormously successful collaboration and a staggeringly prolii c one,
and highlights the importance for all creative people to have a solid producer;
I have not sustained such a relationship, and I appear to have drifted and lost my